


Courting a Madness

by Netgirl_y2k



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark, Dubious Consent, F/F, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-06
Updated: 2014-09-06
Packaged: 2018-02-16 09:48:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2265150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Netgirl_y2k/pseuds/Netgirl_y2k
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The conquering witch-queen and her beloved monster.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Courting a Madness

Freya knelt by the throne, resting her head against Morgana’s leg. The queen absently stroked her head; her fingernails occasionally snagged Freya’s hair and tugged at her scalp.

The former king of Camelot was cast down before them. Arthur Pendragon looked lost, broken; like a man who’d lost everything and didn’t understand how it had happened.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked Morgana, and his face was so open, so betrayed, that Freya felt the stirrings of pity in her heart. She had to remind herself that it was to this man and his father that the bounty hunter had meant to sell her.

Uther and Arthur Pendragon would have seen her burn, would have seen them both burn, that was what Morgana had always said.

Receiving no response beyond a sneer from the new queen, Arthur turned his guileless eyes on Freya. “I don’t know what my sister has done to you, but I can help you. I promise I can help!”

Freya remembered Morgana buying her from Halig, and then somehow buying the bounty hunter’s silence. She remembered Morgana smuggling her into the castle, both of them shivering violently; Morgana had been squirming in her skin, and frantically rubbing her the palms of her hands against her fine skirts.

"I know how to deal with distasteful men," she’d told Freya.

And maybe that had been true, then. But whatever had passed with Halig had torn a hole inside Morgana; and it had been one distasteful man after another: Cenred, and Odin, Helios, and those two years as Sarrum’s prisoners that even now Freya's mind skittered away from remembering.

And now there was little left of Morgana but this hollow queen. Better that, Freya thought, than this willfully blind boy-king.

She mouthed a kiss against Morgana’s knee, and turned back to Arthur Pendragon. “ _She_ didn’t do this to me,” she hissed like a cat.

Morgana stood and dismissed Arthur with a careless, expansive gesture. “Take him away. Aithusa can roast him; cut his throat beforehand, or don’t, I don’t care.”

The sounds of the deposed king being dragged from the room were oddly muted to Freya’s usually keen ears. There was a struggle, and Arthur may even have gotten the upper hand for a moment. He called out for Morgana to remember a time when they’d been friends.

Freya could have told him it was too late for that. Freya herself had never been Morgana’s friend; she’d been a project, a pet, a person Morgana could martyr herself for, a lover, a weapon… but never simply her friend.

Morgana stepped down from the throne. She stood before Freya, lower on the steps; she reached out and stroked Freya’s hair, cupped her face, brushed her fingers over Freya’s mouth. Freya pressed her lips to the pad of Morgana’s thumb, and took her fingers into her mouth. Morgana trailed her wet fingers down Freya’s throat, and tugged her up by the iron collar she wore.

The collar was something Sarrum had procured when they’d been his prisoners; it stopped Freya from turning into a beast by night. He couldn’t have his two favourite pets killing one another, he’d said.

Morgana wore the key to the collar on a chain about her neck. She’d unlocked it only once, the night that they’d taken Camelot.

Freya turned her mind from that night, but not before she remembered flashes of red cloaks and red-black blood as her claws had rend through armour as though it were silk. She remembered a boy fighting Morgana with magic; he’d been better that her, Freya thought treacherously, he would have prevailed had Freya not collided with his exposed back in a whirlwind of teeth and claws and monstrous muscle. 

Morgana tugged Freya closer until their bodies were pressed together.

They had been living in rags for years; in a sense the still were, though their gowns were made of the finest material. Morgana’s was green and black silk and lace, and she wore her hair artfully disheveled; Freya was shoeless, and her red silk dress was ripped in ways that reminded the eye of claw marks.

Morgana wanted everyone to remember what they were: a witch-queen and her beloved monster.

Morgana pulled away and turned on her heel. “Come,” she said. If Freya were ever going to have the will not to follow her, it would not be today.

Much of the castle was still permeated by the smell of cooked flesh. The dragon - the other dragon, the one who’d come to Camelot’s defence, only to be killed by Aithusa - still lay dead in the courtyard. Aithusa was roasting and eating it by feet and inches.

Morgana would have had Aithusa with them at all times, but Freya had been relieved when the white dragon had grown too large to come inside. Morgana had laughed cruelly, and accused Freya of jealousy.

Aithusa now slept coiled around the highest tower of the castle; an unsubtle reminder of what Morgana could do if roused to anger. 

Morgana led Freya to her chambers. They had been King Arthur’s until a few days ago. Morgana had once had her own chamber in Camelot, where she’d hidden Freya for that nervous, anticipatory week before they’d fled Uther's reach; but she didn’t want her old rooms back, she said, she only wanted Arthur’s.

As soon as the door was closed behind them, Morgana pushed Freya up against it in a deep, claiming kiss. She sank her teeth into Freya’s bottom lip, and Freya whimpered, a treacherous wetness already pooling between her legs.

Freya’s mind always shied away from their time as Sarrum’s captives. He had forced she and Morgana to do… _things_...together for his entertainment; and every sweet kiss, every unspoken feeling, every clumsy, half-asleep fumble that had gone before had seemed sullied by it.

Morgana didn’t see it that way. At least, she saw no reason for them to stop.

Freya thought that Morgana would give up this aspect of their relationship if Freya asked her. She would never ask; she did not wish to be proved wrong.

And she wanted it, too. Desperately, hopelessly, she wanted Morgana; both the hollow queen of now, and the girl of long ago who’d saved her from the bounty hunter’s cage.

They tripped and tugged each other towards the bed. Long dead as he was, Freya could still almost feel Sarrum’s greedy, lustful eyes on her back, and yet she wanted Morgana.

Morgana pushed her back onto the king’s soft bed. Freya bounced a little on the plush mattress and laughed with delight. Morgana hiked up her skirt and straddled Freya’s hips; she pinned Freya’s wrists above her head, and the key to Freya’s collar slipped from between her breasts and dangled on its chain.

Morgana’s expression became strangely soft and tender. “We’re safe, Freya. We’re safe now. No one can hurt us here.”

Safety was Morgana’s particular concern. They had to find somewhere safe, she'd said. Then nowhere they went was safe, and Morgana said that they would have to take somewhere and make it safe; then nowhere would do but Camelot.

Freya thought of the Morgana of long ago scrubbing her hands frantically on her skirts; she thought of Sarrum staked out in front of his own castle; she thought of Arthur Pendragon with his guileless blue eyes, and she tasted blood in her mouth.

Freya pulled Morgana down into a kiss. “Yes,” she said sadly against her mouth. “Yes, we’re safe now.”


End file.
